How I process large quantities of ground beef…
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I don’t always brown my beef this way, sometimes I use the traditional method of cooking it in a pan and standing over it chopping, stirring, chopping, stirring…yeah sometimes I do that. One thing I ALWAYS do though, is cook large batches at once. I never just cook enough for one meal.
I prefer to brown at least five to ten pounds at once. I then drain off the grease, cool it, and package it in small freezer bags in whatever amount equals enough for a family meal of spaghetti or whatnot. For my family, this usually means a cup to a cup and a half of ground beef. I freeze it and whenever I need it for a meal, simply thaw in the microwave or with whatever I am cooking and I’ve cut out a major step and a decent amount of mess!
If you end up having a meal such as tacos, which required extra beef, simply grab two bags.
Why get out the skillet, thaw, brown, and drain over and over when you can do it once and save yourself tons of time and repeated messes?
This is one of my favorite ways to cook beef as it doesn’t require the attention that a skillet browning does. Also, you can get those nice little granules of beef without having to chop, chop, chop….Its great for large quantities of beef as well and I find the cooking process is done in half the time, with a lot less fat left on your finished product.
Begin with ground beef. Why do I use ground beef instead of ground chuck or lean ground beef? Simple, its cheaper. Grocery prices have been rising rapidly, gas is through the roof and I still have to feed a family of four with the same amount of money as I had before all of this. Ground beef it is!
Using your hand, take a clump of ground beef and submerge it.
Bring to a boil. You’ll need to stir it just a time or two until its all nice and browned and done.
Until I have a whole bowl like this. At this point, I will get a one cup measuring cup after it has cooled and put one cup servings in individual freezer bags to have on hand whenever I need ground beef for a meal.
And look at all this you left behind!! ewwwww
I have browned and packaged up ground beef in bulk when I still had all of my kids at home, but never thought about using water instead of browning in the skillet. Will try it now, but of course only 5 pounds at a time now since I don’t need the 30 to 40 pounds of ground beet I used to buy.
I am originally from WV, and of course hot dogs in WV are different than from most other places–we use “hot dog sauce” and slaw and onions as our toppers. My mother’s recipe for the hot dog sauce used ground beef cooked this way with all the spices, ketchup, etc added after ground beef cooked down and the water boiled off.
I have been using the pan, chop, brown, chop, brown, chop and drain method for years. I will try this method on a day that I have a really strong stomach!!! I love time saving ideas like this!!!
Just tried this for the first time today and it is AWESOME!!! Thank you so much, Christy! I’m just curious – have you ever tried throwing a clove of garlic in the water? I almost always use garlic w/ ground beef, so I may try it next time – but that’s going to be a while, because of all the nice, new packages in my freezer! So grateful for you!! 🙂
How long is the browned beef good in the freezer?
amazing- I am going to use this method from now on…goes to show you- never too old to learn new tricks!! Thanks a bunch Christy!!!!
I have done this also. Don’t they call this crumbles? Lots easier than frying up all that meat. And it seems like it’s a lot better for you. I can’t stand big clumps of g.beef in stews,chili’s or anything else.
That is SO not how I (used to, as of right now) do my bulk hamburger.
Your method is soooo much easier than freezing the raw stuff in bags, then thawing it out, cooking it, running hot water over it, letting it cool off, smooshing it, then browning the rest of it.
I can’t wait to try it!